Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Namco's Hot New iPhone Game: Ace Combat Xi!

The App Store already features well over 21,000 plus games, but soon you'll be able to add one more terrific game to the list: Namco's 'Ace combat Xi'. As you can see from the above video, this is one terrific high-flying combat aerial game.

The Ace Combat series dates back from around 1995, with various versions running on the Playstation 1 and 2, Xbox 360 and Sony's PSP. The iPhone version above, as you can see, looks absolutely fantastic, with very smooth animation and game play.

Namco hasn't said specifically when Ace Combat will be released, but if your interested in learning more, Namco is releasing more information through its Facebook page. They recently posted 13 terrific screen shots which you can see here. According to JC Fletcher, writing for Joystick.com , it should be released sometime this winter. He recently got some hands on time with the iPhone version and said that:

"The graphical presentation is somewhere in the early PS2 era, which is to say very impressive for an iPhone experience..... I went through about ten enemy planes before my brief three-minute demo elapsed."

"As for the production values, the game does its name justice, as Ace Combat was a very professional, very beautiful package. The interface had everything from mission time, weapon readouts, altitude, and airspeed, you got target direction indicators, the tracking boxes would move and chase targets before lock-on, enemy planes had their distance under them in tiny text, and the actual visuals were very impressive. The engines would glow and have slight heat effects when cranking up the speed, flying close to the ground showed off some decent water and land textures, and there was even a few lens flares as I'd move around and fly towards the sun at odd angles. Even the audio – which I experienced with a set of soundproof headphones – was nice, including plenty of English voiceover."

Maybe I'm not the one to ask, since I'm not much of a gamer, but Ace Combat Xi looks like the kind of game that I would play, well...... if I played games! I love the graphics and the fluid motion of its game play, and for me at least, they are visually stunning and I believe it's games like Namco's Ace Combat that helps raise the iPhone above its competitors and makes it superior to any other smart phone out there, and especially in the gaming department.

Just don't expect to play a game like Ace Combat, in all its full glory, on any other web based phone like Android or a Palm Pre, because it just ain't going to happen baby!